Samuel Beckett: The Expressive Dilemma

In this study of "Molloy", "Malone Dies" and "The Unnamable", Lawrence Miller traces Beckett's attempt to voice the expressive dilemma that is posed by the assumptions of modernist art and art criticism. A preliminary examination of Beckett's critical writings on literature and painting reveals a growing suspicion of modernist ambitions; it is the trilogy of novels, however, which represents Beckett's most sustained rejection of the "feasible" aspirations of an expressive theory of art. Still, the goal of expression cannot be abandoned since it represents the essence of the human condition; the compulsion inevitably triumphs over the longing to end.